Inside The Hidden History Of Britain's Best-Preserved Noble Estates

The manors, castles and stately homes I visit across Britain are brimming with magnificent history and inspiration, but the gardens and landscapes which surround these beautiful buildings have their own rich heritage and stories to tell. This bit of the garden actually was designed like this by the Victorians, the sixth duchess when she was a widow and her companion who was a cousin, they were very influential in this. Right. And they moved that north wall back about three metres creating this flat terrace. I see, I see, okay. And creating the herbaceous borders which I think were a much more Victorian and then Edwardian tradition. This is one of my favourite areas of the garden, we call it the sundial garden, one of the only areas of what we would call formal planting that we have in the garden. And this is the original template of the garden, essentially you would have looked out from in this sort of this bay window. Right. And so you would look down over this garden where you'd see the children play. When I married into the British aristocracy, it was the start of a wonderfully exciting journey, but it was also a little daunting. I became a Viscountess, and for an American girl from a small town outside Chicago, that was quite a shock. I live with my husband Luke, heir to the Earl of Sandwich, and our family at Mapperton House in Dorset. Living in a place like this is a joy but also a challenge, and every day we're aware that we're preserving a very special part of Britain's heritage. Mapperton has opened up an extraordinary new world for me, and I can't wait to share it with you all. So if you love castles, and manors, and stately homes as much as I do, please join this American Viscountess as I journey into the British countryside in search of some of Britain's finest historic houses. Here at Mapperton, the Italianate gardens are absolutely at the heart of this place. They're both formal and wild. The beauty and power of nature is literally all around. The gardens took on their current life in the 1920s, when the owner of Mapperton at the time, Mrs. Ethel Labashere, designed a sunken Italianate garden in the natural valley here. The gates to the gardens were opened to the public in the 1930s, with thousands of visitors enjoying their peace, beauty, and tranquility ever since. For nearly 70 years since the Montague family moved here in the 1950s, these gardens have been treasured and lovingly cared for and developed, most recently by my mother-in-law, the 11th Countess of Sandwich, who has devoted hours to preserving and nurturing these historic, award-winning, grade-two listed gardens. Well, what's good about the orange tree is it's got some rather wonderful plants in it. And it smells amazing in here. It does smell, and then these are lovely too. These are beautiful. But what is really good is this rose up here. Do you see it with the lovely white flowers? I put that in. Curiously enough, it's an old Victorian tea rose called nifotos. And it doesn't really live outside. It's an indoor conservatory rose. And funnily enough, when my parents went to live in Sussex, in the conservatory there was nifotos. It's the sort of rose that people had in their conservatories. So when you arrived here at Mapperton, this had been built by Hinch. Nobody thinks that this is an old conservatory. It was built in 1968. It was opened in 1968, and it leaked from the day it was opened. And it still is, even though it's been re-roofed and heaven knows what. My father-in-law, who was used to a larger garden, even than this, well, this garden is only 15 acres, which in the great scheme of things is not that much, but they are 15 acres of gardened garden as opposed to rolling acres of parkland. But he was used to a bigger garden, and he always had very grand ideas, my father-in-law, Hinch. So he built an orangery. It's one of the few orangeries built in the 1960s. And it's given him, it gave him a lot of joy, a lot of joy. It's given all of us a lot of joy. We've sort of changed the plant. Yeah, did you then change it a bit? The thing we didn't change is the vine over there, which you can't really see, which is that Italian vine, the strawberry grape, uva fragola. It's so high that what I try to do is create a full ceiling across. Do you see there? Because that proportion is so much better than this higher one. Yes, I do see that. So I've been trying to do that, and it's down there with the vine and the rose. So coming out here, I remember one of the things that you've always told me is a manor house having this size of garden and these formal gardens isn't common. No, no, no. I mean, what has happened to Mapeton is that it was a sort of reason, I mean, it's a very beautiful manor house, an astonishingly beautiful manor house, but it would never have had the aristocratic furniture that's in it. My father-in-law brought from Hinchinbrook, nor would it ever have had a garden this big. And in fact, my father-in-law doubled the size of the garden. But in fact, what happened to this garden, if I start from where the garden starts that we can see here, it was put in by Mrs. Labouchere, who owned the house from 1919 to 1954 or 5 when my father-in-law bought it. Right. And she put in the topiary garden, which we'll see in a minute or two, down there. And it was an Italianate garden, totally symmetrical, right? And the pergola, which we'll see down there, half of it was up here. So that it was symmetrical. My father-in-law, having put in the orangery, realised he needed a sweep of steps and put in also a sundial where he could address the nation. And it all changed. So it was no longer symmetrical. And the orangery was completely detached from the topiary garden. So I put in this row of crab apples to try to weld the orangery to the topiary garden. Okay, okay, yes. And these big flower beds. Beautiful. Yeah, they're stunning at the moment. What's special about the gardens at Mapperton is that they even look glorious on a rainy and wet spring day. So you've been looking after, really, these gardens that are award-winning, Italianate gardens. They've won lots of awards. They've been in lots of lovely books, lots of articles. They're even an absolutely brilliant garden in the winter because they've got so much form designed to them. But this is an enormous task. But it's never been my primary task. No, no, no, I know that. I mean, I'm afraid it really hasn't. We have improved them enormously. When I say that, I mean both the gardening staff and me. I mean, when we first came here, they were still sort of, quite correctly, Hynch's Gardens and had absolutely hedges bedding out plants like asters and pelargoniums and sweetwilliams and things in awful little beds all over the place. Okay, so you had to do quite a bit. A huge amount. And we created that whole run and those beds, we doubled the size, not these beds, these beds are the same size, but they were full of just boring white roses or something. I think you ought just to know, actually, Julia, as we walk past that, that's where the deer have eaten every single leaf. Oh my goodness, I can see. Yeah, of course I can see. And so, yes, of course, what John and I have done is we've enriched the planting, hugely enriched it, doubled the number of species, if not tripled, and given it a sort of warmth and excitement that it didn't have. So, yes, a huge amount of planting, huge amount of selection of species. I made some hideous mistakes, obviously. No, I'm sure you didn't. Of course I did, yeah, I have to. So what is your... I can't do anything, Julia, this one. I know. Got to get through and, oops. Yeah, whoa. You see, for instance, that my father-in-law put in. He was rather good on clematis. He was good on shrubs. He put in this thing, carocchia. I mean, the arboretum which he created has got excellent trees in it. I've actually added some more interesting trees, which one of these days, let's go around and I'll show them sometime. Definitely, definitely. Can you tell me just a little bit, though, about the grottos? Yes, I can tell you a little bit about this. I think the most important thing about this is it is a very, very handsome, very, very elegant topiary garden. And you created that? No, no, this is all Mrs. Labouchere. Oh, this is all Mrs. Labouchere, okay. Everything here is Mrs. Labouchere. Now, these little grottos, there are two grottos there. There's the croquet pavilion up there. There's a little summer house there. She had fires in all of them, Mrs. Labouchere, because she liked to do watercolors. Yes. And so she sat in them with a fire and no doubt somebody bringing logs had to. I know, it's amazing. Have you ever lit one of the fires in there? Yes, we did and it smoked appallingly. Oh, right, okay. Right. If you, if I were to ask you, what's your favorite? I know, people ask me that all the time. I have an interesting idea. I have to say that I'm not one of those great gardeners who really, you know, is obsessed either by gardens or by plants. I'm very interested in plants. I'm very interested in seeing that we have good plants and also that we have contrasts of green and flowers and leaf forms. So we have contrasts of color and form. Yep. These are not bad. The holes at the moment are where we plant things, which had this year been a little less unpleasant than it has been. They would already be planted. Can't do it. But everything's just a bit delayed. Yes. Everything, including the wisteria. These things like these tree pennies, I put in all these because I like the shape of the leaves. And when does the Japanese wisteria over there? Oh, is that the Japanese one? Well, there are two white ones here. One is Chinensis and the other is Friobonda, which is Japanese. Well, they should be coming out quite soon. A tiny bit later than the ones in the front courtyard. And they should be coming out, but not in this one. No sensible plant is going to come out in this weather. No, they're all waiting for the sun, like we are. So tell me just a little bit about the pools, because they're quite a feature. Yeah. Well, this first run of yew bushes was here when my father-in-law arrived. OK. He put in the second lot. Ah, so there was only one. Yeah. OK. And Mrs. Labouchere put in that semicircular garden there. OK. OK? Yes. And I don't know who put in the Irish yews. Yeah. And this would have been a carp pond for people to eat the fish in the winter. The second one, I have once seen a map where it didn't exist. OK. But that was about 30 years ago, and I've never found the map again, which is really boring. OK. Do you think Mrs. Labouchere possibly put that in? Quite likely. OK. Quite likely. OK. They are beautiful. Of course, we like to swim in there as well. I like to wave at the frogs as I go by. Hi! Yeah, it's brilliant. It is lovely. The best time to swim is six o'clock in the evening when the sun's out, and you'll get these wonderful shadows of the yews falling onto the pool. If we ever do see the sun again. Again. I can't see myself ever swimming in there again. I will if it's really warm, but not in this weather. Not in this weather. Anyway, Caroline, thank you. This was a real treat. Every time I come to the gardens with you, I learn something new. When I visited the glorious Georgian masterpiece, Constable Burton Hall in North Yorkshire, home to the Wyville family, it was so lovely to take a walk with Imogen in the beautiful formal and woodland gardens. So this is a really beautiful time of year in the gardens. Everything suddenly just exploded in colour. And actually, this is one of my favourite areas of the garden. We call it the sundial garden. One of the only areas of what we would call formal planting that we have in the garden. And this is the original template of the garden. Essentially, you would have looked out from in this sort of this bay window. Right. And so you would look down over this garden where, you know, you'd see the children playing. Yes, yes. And then this garden extends out into a sort of tiered terraced garden, which would have been more formal at the outset, but over time has become sort of slightly more of a woodland terracing. Yes. The most wonderful thing, which you'll see, is that these trees, you know, really envelop the house. All these beautiful cedar trees here. And the house is really nestled in amongst this area. You know, we dip down to the lakes behind the house here, but you feel kind of nestled and cosy in this spot. And those are the lakes that, again, I saw when I entered into the outer hall from that picture there. Exactly. And I think, you know, we don't have so many maps or drawings that have kind of made the test of time, but it alludes, the few that we do have, allude to there being pleasure walks in that area. Yes. So we think that we found some sort of big stone areas, essentially, where we think there might have been, you know, little villas or follies. Right. You know, none of it's there today, but there's a beautiful Palladian bridge down by that lake, which wouldn't have been there had it just been, you know, rural. Right, exactly, exactly. So, you know, that's another, that's a project for, you know, years to come, but we would love to sort of reinstate that route through those gardens as well. But at the moment, you know, this is our, this is our sort of circuit. It's so beautiful. You know, there's always projects going on at these houses. Absolutely. It's very different in one sense to how they had been lived in the past, because we as custodians, homeowners, we're doing much of the work ourselves. Totally, you know, we have to do, you know, whatever is actually within our realm of, you know, casting. Exactly. And, you know, there was obviously, you know, hundreds of staff and gardeners and, you know, people turning, you know, now we're a very, a very boutique team. You know, we do. I love that term. I'm going to steal that from you. A boutique team. A little boutique team. That is brilliant. So, you know, and actually this is, this is what brings us pleasure. And, you know, you get beautiful vistas through the garden, so you can get a little glimpse of the lakes as you walk through. You can see the river running through. It's actually called the Dean. It's like a jungle out there at the moment. It is, but it's lovely. I mean, listen, it's all about rewilding the world. Exactly. So you are right. We're trailblazers. We were the trailblazers. And, you know, it's not something that I know, you know, the garden is coming to me over the course of time. I think you get your head around the house. Yes. And then you start to sort of, you know, broaden out. And it's wonderful. You know, it's a beautiful, beautiful garden. But, you know, there are little corners. You know, each year we take a little, a little chunk. And I think, you know, then I know, you know, what's going on in that little corner of the garden. And, you know, step by step, you know, you create your, your journey with the garden. Same with the house. Yeah. There was a little area just beneath the dining room window there, which, you know, I sort of looked at it. You had the formal planting here. And I thought, you know what? That's something we could make more of that. So actually we dug out two new beds there, which a great friend of mine designed for my 40th birthday. And we've planted that up now, which is so beautiful because now I feel, you know, a sense of my own story in the garden, which is so lovely. Yeah. And now I know, you know, if I pull a weed out of there, I know it's a weed rather than something I shouldn't be touching. Exactly. You have these extraordinary gardens. We've just sort of wandered and meandered through them with, of course, the backdrop of the house and then looking down here onto the lovely water. But visitors, can they, they can come here? Yeah. So essentially the gardens used to be open to the public all the way through from March to September. But, you know, when we moved in, we've got young children and we thought that we would shift into, you know, something that was a little bit more manageable for us. Right. Because, you know, the kids need to have a sense of freedom and to be able to ride their bikes. Yeah, of course. But at the same time, we wanted to be able to share the gardens. So essentially now we've just run more events. Yes. And we kickstart those events in the spring season with our Tulip Festival, which is really the sort of, you know, the grand opening, of course, of the Burton Gardens for the season. And that is a long-standing relationship with a nursery called Blom's Bulbs. OK. Who just won their 70th gold at Chelsea. Oh my goodness. Wow. They are really exceptional. And I think the relationship started over 25 years ago. So we're their northern show garden. You know, we're incredibly fortunate to have this amazing relationship with them. Yes. And we plant 7,000 of their tulips around the gardens. Fantastic. And it's absolutely gorgeous. I love tulips anyway. So, you know, to have these beautiful displays throughout the garden is really amazing. Amazing. So the Tulip Festival happens when? So it's the first May bank holiday weekend. So it's sort of, you know, first of May or thereabouts. Right. And then really throughout the entire month of May, the tulips are in the gardens and it looks absolutely amazing. So you often get the blossom coming at the same time and the magnolias and everything is just full of life. And the winters are long and cold. So for me, that's my, you know, such exciting time of year. Spring is here. It's here, new life is everywhere. Right. Here you get another glimpse of the river running through. It's fantastic. Which is so lovely. So this is the... This is beautiful. You know, aces grow particularly well here. So, you know, the aces draw your eye over. Yeah, they do. Across the garden, so it's beautiful. And also just the light coming in right now is really, really lovely. Yeah. So, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty gorgeous. It is really gorgeous. So really the peak, though, is, of course, the tulip festival. I think that really, you know... How many in total? Do you know how many tulips? Well, we have, I think we have over 7,000 and about 100 different varieties. So we plant them in a sort of specimen fashion. And each year we, you know, we remove them and replant. Yeah. 7,000 tulips. It's a real labour of love. And we also, because, you know, you can imagine the deer and the... This thing is absolutely wonderful. So it's go to painstaking lengths with covering them with cages until it's sort of showtime and then all the cages come off. But it is amazing. You know, it's really an amazing sight. And actually then we get left with this... You know, we obviously take them out and then we have these huge beds that we, you know, have empty. So we've now removed the tulips and we replaced those beds with dahlias with a view to having a sort of late summer show for dahlias. What's amazing is when you, you know, if you go up the parkland and you approach Constable Burton, as you would have done, you know, in the original house, you know, you would have snaked through the parkland and then suddenly, you know, happened upon Constable Burton. You get little sort of, you know, little glimpses of it. And then suddenly it's presented to you. But what you do see is, you know, the foresight that they had to plant this incredible landscape around the house to frame it. You know, it's just genius. The thought that went into it in sort of designing this space. And again, back then it was this community of people that lived either around the house or of course on the estate. And this is how I think historic houses in particular have evolved. Whereas before it was sort of like, okay, everybody just sort of stays within the community. Now we as homeowners, we're opening it up so that people can come and stay and enjoy the history of your house and they can walk through the gardens. And so it's opening it up to a wider community. Absolutely. But look at this view. I know, there it is. It's gorgeous at this time of day because the stone really starts to have that golden glow. It changes dramatically in the sunlight. From North Yorkshire, we head to the Highlands of Scotland where the drama of the landscape cascades down to the mature gardens which envelop Blair Castle itself. I met up with Sarah Troughton, half-sister of the 10th Duke of Athol, to explore the historic walled garden. This is stunning. This sort of visual right here with the castle behind. But now, where are we entering into? Well, we're entering up Hercules Walk, walking towards the statue of Hercules. And this was all designed and created by the 2nd Duke and his head gardener, John Wilson. Okay, and what time? Give me the time frame there. It was 1740 onwards. He died in 1764, so over that sort of 30-year span. And from the front door of the castle, he devised various vistas. One was up to Hercules, slightly overgrown now. One was down the front drive. Another was up towards the statue of Diana in Diana's Grove, which is where we have these fantastic big high conifer trees. Right. But the one to Hercules was the main one. And he first of all created, leveled out this path, because I think it was quite like that. Okay. Just with manpower. There was no machines in those days. Of course not. And he planted it up with some nice trees, shrubberies. But a lot of what we're seeing now was planted in about 1900. Okay. Because there was a terrible storm at the end of the 19th century. Okay. And a lot was blown down. And then when he got to Hercules, he thought the view wasn't quite nice enough to the left. It was a bit boggy and didn't look too hot. So he decided to dig a lake the whole length. Right. Which he called the Canal Pond, and then a square pond at the far end. So it all drained into that. Oh my goodness. And then he thought he'd like to plant some things, but there were too many animals around, so he built a wall all around it. And so it is now, it's nearly 10 acres. Oh wow. Walled garden. Fantastic. And it was developed by the second Duke as what in those days was known as a fair mornay, an ornamental productive garden. Okay. So there were roses and a lot of scent from the archives. I picked this up, but also lots of fruit, lots of vegetables, herbs. So it served as both where, somewhere where you'd take a very pleasant walk. Right. But also very productive for everybody. I mean, the amount of produce must have covered most of the estate. Yeah, absolutely. The sad thing about this garden was after the second world war, it was in very poor condition. Somebody tried to run it as a market garden, but it just didn't work. And so in the early sixties, it was planted with Christmas trees from one end to the other. So all my childhood memory really is full of Christmas trees. So what happened to the Christmas trees then? Well, they were cut down when the decision was taken to try and restore the garden. Ah, okay. Not totally to its former glory, but with all the paths and some of the beds in position. Okay. Taking inspiration from the archives, Sarah has revived the historic gardens at Blair. We had a whole project. Somebody did a plan. We had a historian who came and researched all the archives and drew up the plan of how the garden would have been. And most of it, we could see the pond was still intact. Right. Okay. We had to build up the sides and we had to build up the retaining wall and all that, but the paths weren't here, but it was easy to work out where they'd been when we re-established them. Look at them. Oh my goodness. And all these fruit trees are planted. They're not the same species. Okay. But they are planted in exactly the same positions as the original ones would have been. Because that's how detailed the information in the archives was. Incredible. So all these bear different fruit? Yes, they're rows. I mean, this is a row of Morello cherries. Yes. And then there's a row of pears, apples, plums. And then you start again with cherries. How brilliant. And these are a mixture of those three fruits, four fruits. How wonderful. And then this is the north terrace. This bit of the garden actually was designed like this by the Victorians. Okay. The sixth duchess, when she was a widow, and her companion, who was a cousin, they were very influential in this bit. Right. And they moved that north wall back about three metres. Because the old road, the old driveway from the road to Inverness, used to be back there. And it had changed and gone down to the modern village. Okay. Leaving that as an unimportant roadway. Okay. So they moved literally about three metres back. So then you moved it... Creating this flat terrace. I see, I see. Okay. And creating the herbaceous borders, which I think were a much more Victorian and then Edwardian tradition than they would have been earlier Georgian 18th century tradition. And actually we've designed it to be at its best in July, August, because that's when we get most visitors. And for a Scottish herbaceous garden, that actually is a good time. It's that much later than England. So this is something you've really had a hand in in making sure that this carries on for future generations. It's beautiful. And just the scents as well. Yes, I mean, I hope so. But gardens evolve all the time, you know. There's no way you can say that's how it's going to be forever. Right. Yes. Of course it's not. Yeah. No, but it's also... Hello! It's also, in my view at least, you know, you can... Houses evolve as well, of course, of course. But I think gardens much more than a house. And a garden is something that you can visit really four times a year in the seasons. Because they change in the seasons. And a house, you know, maybe once a year, seeing what the next project is. But that's what's so wonderful about the gardens. Because you can see how, in each season, how it changes. No, it is very seasonal, this garden. I mean, in May, the fruit blossom is lovely. And you get these very geometric lines of blossom. And then the herbaceous comes on, led by the roses. And it's quite a good garden for roses. And then the high summer is the most colourful period with all the herbaceous. Yes. But then the autumn is beautiful here. We have very... And the trees, you know, round the outside, they have wonderful colour, as well as what's in the garden. So I love the autumn, actually. Well, I'm very pleased I came, you know, at the height of the herbaceous borders, looking so absolutely stunning in their colour. And scent. Can you smell the lilies? Because scent has been a great tradition in this garden. All mentioned in the archives, it's always saying, scented honeysuckle, scented roses, scented everything. So when we were planting, we always had in mind that we wanted to have good wafts of scent. Yeah. Well, I've had plenty from the point that we started. I mean, it's just constant. I feel like it's absolutely constant. And this is spectacular to be here, as well. Well, there's Hercules. There he is. There is very odd geometry in this garden. Nothing is actually 90 degrees. It's so nice now. The garden is... I mean, a garden's never done, but it's kind of complete. And right now, we just redo things or rejig things a little bit, add a bit more colour. When something's not looking quite right, change it. It's just lovely. Thank you so much for joining me, and I hope you've enjoyed this horticultural feast as much as I have. I look forward to seeing you soon for more historic house adventures.